Social Networking - Where Do We Go from Here?

Maybe it's just me, but I have noticed that the focus on social networking sites seems to be going more and more towards sharing everything with everybody.  These sites want us to believe that our friends care about the latest "make money online" craze, and that our family wants to know about that hot date we had last night.  They convince us that the more information that we post, the more followers we'll gain and the more popular we will become.

Let's take a look at this theory.  I have an account with a popular social networking site.  Let's call it "Pace Brook".  In my contacts, I have several personal friends, my fiance, my mom, and several "networking contacts".  I go to my "wall" and in the morning and there are an average of 160 posts there waiting for me to peruse.   Another of the sites to which I belong (we will call it "pwitter"), has even more "pweets".  Unless I am going to spend the better part of my day going through them all, how do I sort out what I want to read and what I don't before starting my work day?

I don't exactly have an enormous list of contacts.  Some of my friends have hundreds of people on their contacts list; if not thousands.  Although there are a lot of people I would like to add to my list, what they offer in the way of useful content is nullified by excess noise they would contribute to my wall.

My other concern is that I don't really think my networking contacts on the other side of the planet really care about my friend's birthday party, and I am sure my friends are sick of hearing about my latest blog entry on the versatility of industrial hybrid lighting.  In fact, any given post will reach people that want to read it and others that don't.  The more I post, the less likely people will be to read them, due to my history of posting things they don't care about. 

I am not alone here.  The more contacts you have, the smaller percentage of posts you actually read.  The percentage of your contacts that actually read your posts goes down as well.  Seems a bit counter productive, doesn't it?

What about your personal info? There is information about me that I want some people to know, but not others.  I know people that have multiple accounts under different names for different purposes, but that seems a bit excessive.  I have found myself resigned to just filling out my profiles with the most generic of information.  That's not ideal, but it beats the alternative.

So what do I want?  I want my contacts categorize into groups that I can easily manage.  I want to see what's going on with my friends or my coworkers or my networking contacts just by going to the appropriate "wall".  I want to be on my "friends" wall and post something and know that only my "friends" will see it.  I want to search for all of my contacts that live near me and quickly and easily send a post to just them.  I want my coworkers to go to my profile and see that I am a responsible professional, or my networking contacts to read that I am a blue widgets expert.  I want my friends to see the picture I took of Jason with the lampshade on his head, without my coworkers inquiring as to quality of my friends.

The best part is that since I am only sending posts to people that I think will want to read them, more of my posts will actually get read!  I can send out party invitations to my friends in San Jose, or quickly update my coworkers about a change in plans for the next meeting.

What I want, in essence is a "buzz conduit".  Something that will direct all the incoming buzz to the proper location, and the outgoing buzz to the people that I want it to reach.  It would also be nice to have some of my privacy back.

It doesn't look like any of the "big boys" are going to be making these kind of drastic changes to their platforms. There is, however, a new site setting up for launch that wants to offer us all what I think most of us want - a buzz conduit of our very own.  It's name (aptly or no, you decide) is buzzduit.com, and it's coming soon!

Head over to buzzduit.com and sign up to the mailing list, so you will know the MINUTE it is ready for launch!  Once on the list you can also email support with any questions or feedback.You can also view the blog here.